The movies Bruce Willis wishes he starred in

(Credit: Alamy)

Tue 13 May 2025 11:30, UK

While he’s mainly known for his adventures in the realm of action movies, Bruce Willis has done much more on screen than just shoot people and blow stuff up. He’s done comedy with the Look Who’s Talking series, fronted big sci-fi projects like 12 Monkeys and The Fifth Element, and worked with legendary auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson.

The levels of success and variety Willis achieved prior to his unfortunate retirement in 2022 were on a scale unmatched by most of his peers. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a little professional jealousy. For every great movie the icon appeared in, it seems as if there was another one he wished he could have been on the poster for.

In response to a fan asking him which classic movies he wished he’d been involved in, Willis gave a very impressive list. “Spartacus is a good one,” he said. “Any Alfred Hitchcock Film, except perhaps Rope. The Exorcist. Any Steve McQueen movie. I would have liked to work with [Humphrey] Bogart, especially in The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. I would have liked to be in The Searchers. The Star Wars series. This is a list that could go on for quite a while, and these are just a few.”

Spartacus, the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film starring Kirk Douglas as the titular hero, is one of Willis’ favourite ever movies. He never worked directly with Douglas; the closest he would get was a series of movies made with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kirk’s daughter-in-law, via her marriage to his son Michael. Given some of the other actors on his list – Steve McQueen and Humphrey Bogart, mostly – it’s clear that Willis idolises a certain style of very masculine, ‘leading man’ acting. He, too, would come to embody this style during his film career, though perhaps not in the exact same manner. Society in general had come a long way since the days of Douglas, McQueen, and Bogart, but if Brucey could have had his way, he’d have been right up there with them.

Keeping with the macho theme, The Searchers is a classic western starring John Wayne in the title role. For all his career variations, Willis never really starred in many cowboy movies. There’s Last Man Standing from 1996, a western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and Sunset, in which Willis plays early Wayne influence Tom Mix, but that’s about it. Despite his most famous catchphrase being ‘yippee-ki-yay’, he clearly wasn’t that enthusiastic about doing any gunslinging himself.

Keen Willis fans will know that the star has a connection to Hitchcock. His character is seen watching Vertigo during the final scenes of 12 Monkeys. That film also stars James Stewart, the lead man in Hitchcock’s Rope. Why Willis isn’t so keen on that movie remains a mystery; he’s never publicly said anything negative about it or Stewart. There’s every chance he thinks the film is so good that he would ruin it, but we’ll never know for sure.

Known for his love of classic cinema, it should come as no surprise that Willis has fantasies about casting himself in so many iconic roles. He might have never shared the screen with McQueen or battled Romans alongside Douglas, but he established more than enough of his own legacy to warrant that null and void.

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